‘psycho genius’ who was inspired by Agatha Christie to poison his neighbours... HORSE KILLER
My mother died a terrible death. It was a living hell
did it for the thrill because he thought he could get away with it.”
Trepal crept into the Carr family home in Florida in October 1988 and left the deadly cola in their kitchen.
Detectives are clueless as to why he targeted his innocent neighbours, but they described him as a “diabolical killer” who thought he was smarter than the police.
As he languishes on death row, Trepal maintains his innocence.
Creepy
But evidence shows he took inspiration from The Queen of Crime’s 1961 book, while also enjoying a secret life of sex dungeons, bondage and creepy murder mystery parties.
In a twist straight out of a Christie novel, he was captured by an undercover police officer who attended his murder mystery parties.
Duane said: “It is amazing to think he got all his inspiration from Agatha Christie’s book. He obviously didn’t have a good enough imagination so he had to steal somebody else’s work.
“I have not read The Pale Horse myself but I want to. I am also interested in watching this BBC show people are raving about.”
Duane, who was 16 when he was poisoned, spent almost a year in hospital recovering from the attack. The thallium ravaged his nerves, causing his hands and feet to feel like they were on fire – and the only thing that relieved the pain was submerging himself in scalding hot water.
The poison also affected his speech, made him lose his hair and put him in a wheelchair.
And when he finally left hospital, Duane weighed just six-and-a-half stone and would spend the next decade learning to walk again.
He also lost his mother while he was fighting for his own life. She passed away on a ward two floors above him.
“The time in the hospital was truly terrible,” Duane recalled.
“For months, I was in non-stop agony. My body literally withered away and my legs became like toothpicks.
“I had to say goodbye to my mother, too. They took me into her room with the rest of my family and took her off life support. Then she was gone.
“I had just lost the best thing in my life.”
Trepal, a psychology graduate and aspiring scientist, was first arrested in 1975 after setting up a drug lab to produce amphetamines. He served three years in jail.
He went on to live off his wife Diane’s earnings. The orthopaedic surgeon later divorced him after learning of his heinous crimes.
Duane did not even know his neighbour was a suspect until he saw he had been arrested on the news.
“We all thought Trepal was a weird guy but we never suspected he could do what he did,” he said.
“He was strange, creepy and quiet. He’d watch us from his window when we were in the garden but he seemed harmless. When I found out he was the killer, I was stunned.”
Duane’s stepbrother Travis, his niece Kacy, his sister Cissy and his stepfather Pye were all poisoned by Trepal.
Police got their first breakthrough when they discovered cola bottles in the family home contained minute traces of thallium – a rat poison.
The FBI soon got involved and created a profile for the murderer.
And during a routine interview, computer programmer Trepal used a very similar sentence to one in a threatening letter that had been sent to the Carrs months earlier. The selfproclaimed amateur “crime-scene expert” suddenly became the number one suspect.
Police assigned Lieutenant Susan Goreck to the case and ordered her to befriend Trepal in an undercover operation. Fittingly, his favourite pasttime was arranging murder mystery parties for his pals at Mensa, so Goreck got an invite.
Using the fake identity of Sherry Guin, she built up a rapport with Trepal – and was convinced he was the killer.
During visits to his home, she found a copy of Agatha Christie’s The Pale Horse, as well as other chilling literature and a ‘secret room’ he only ever showed to close pals. A year after his crime, Trepal moved to another town in Florida, 45 miles away.
Amazingly, he agreed to rent out his property to Goreck, who then called in a team of forensic experts.
They eventually found traces of thallium in bottles in his garage.
When Trepal was finally arrested, detectives found him at the top of his stairs wearing nothing but a pair of blue bikini bottoms.
Chillingly, they discovered a room at the property filled with bondage and torture gear, literature about poison and an array of exotic chemicals.
Trepal was convicted of murder and attempted murder and received the death sentence in March 1991. He has been on death row ever since and has run out of appeals.
Duane believes Trepal would never have been caught if it wasn’t for Goreck’s brave police work and branded her a real-life “superhero”.
Pleasure
He added: “I have seen Susan a few times over the years.
“What she did to help capture Trepal was genuinely remarkable. He could have easily tried to kill her.
“One day she will make a brilliant character in a movie. I can never thank her enough.”
Having spent so much time with Trepal, the superstar lieutenant believes that he killed for sheer intellectual pleasure.
“I think this was all a game to him,” Goreck said.
“He thought he’d committed the perfect crime.”